Items tagged with SSD

If you notice that solid state drives are getting more expensive, blame smartphones, at least in part. Smartphone makers are drying up the supply of NAND flash memory chips and to make matters worse, the transition from 2D NAND to 3D NAND manufacturing is putting added strain on how the overall output of chips. There just isn't a big enough supply to meet demand. We all know what happens when demand exceeds supply—prices go up. The latest report from market observer DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, notes that the global NAND flash industry grew nearly 20 percent in the third quarter compared...Read more...

Micron, the memory maker based out of Boise, Idaho, is introducing a new solid state drive family for enterprise clients that combines the typical fast performance SSDs are known for with atypical capacities culminating in 8 terabytes. The new Micron 5100 Series Enterprise SSDs are purportedly reliable too, delivering the storage trifecta that could have persuaded clients to kick their datacenter's hard disk drives to the curb. Source: Micron That is precisely the angle Micron is taking here. Looking at the total cost of ownership (TCO), Micron compared its 5100 Eco drives with 10,000 RPM hard...Read more...

When Samsung initially announced the SSD 960 PRO and SSD 960 EVO NVMe drives a few months back, we were eager to get our hands on them for some in-house testing. Their specifications, which included transfer speeds in excess of 3.2GB/s, were among the fastest we’d seen to date for consumer-class M.2-based Solid State Drive. Last month, when we were able to dig into the flagship Samsung SSD 960 PRO, we came away impressed. So impressed, that we gave the drive an Editor’s Choice award – you can check out that review right here. Today, we get to take a close look at the more affordable Samsung SSD...Read more...

Samsung announced its latest, consumer-class NVMe M.2-based solid state drives a few weeks back, the SSD 960 Pro and SSD 960 EVO, but today marks the official launch of those products. As has been the case for the last couple of generations, the EVO moniker denotes the more mainstream line-up, while the Pro designation is reserved for higher-end, flagship products. If you check out our coverage of the initial announcement, you’ll see that the Samsung SSD 960 EVO line has some killer specifications, with read speeds in the 3.2GB/s range and prices that are competitive with other NVMe M.2 solid...Read more...

Once you’ve tasted the sweet performance goodness offered by solid state drives (SSDs), it’s hard to go back to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) for your data needs. Western Digital is hoping to go after mainstream customers that are looking for a quick and easy speed boost with its new WD Blue and WD Green SSDs. The WD Blue series is available in both 2.5-inch and M.2 2280 form-factors in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. Western Digital says that the drives — which are targeted at both desktop and notebook users — offer sequential read and write speeds of 545 MB/sec and 525 MB/sec respectively...Read more...

While many consumers would all love to upgrade to super-fast M.2 NVMe SSDs that offer 3,500+ MB/sec read and write speeds, there are others that would gladly ditch their mechanical HDDs for a more budget-minded SATA SSD. For those in the latter category, Toshiba has released a new OCZ SSD series that won’t break the bank while at the same time offering respectable performance. The OCZ TL100 makes use of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory, and is available in both 120GB and 240GB capacities. According to Toshiba, the TL100 family offers sequential read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/sec...Read more...

SanDisk recently launched a new line of portable storage products, with photographers, videographers, and creative professionals in mind. The particular drive we'll be showing you here, the SanDisk Extreme 510, has a 480GB capacity and attaches to a PC using USB, though smaller capacities are also available. Not only does it have the performance of an SSD, with up to 430MB/s reads and 400MB/s writes over a USB 3.0 connection, but it is also water resistant, dust resistant (IP55 rating), and rugged enough to handle the rigors of mobile computing.In addition to being rugged, SanDisk also incorporated...Read more...

Samsung continues to advanced the company's very successful 900 series family of consumer class SSDs today, with the announcement of the Samsung 960 EVO and 960 Pro NVMe PCI Express M.2 Solid State Drives. Built on Samsung's 3D V-NAND technology and employing the new Samsung Polaris SSD controller, the 960 Pro is Samsung's highest performance, high endurance drive and the successor to last year's 950 Pro. The 960 EVO is the lower cost model and a follow-on to last year's Samsung 950 EVO drive. The 960 EVO is also powered by the same Samsung Polaris controller but employs more cost-efficient Samsung...Read more...

The Samsung SSD 850 EVO has become somewhat of a yardstick, by which other SATA-based SSDs are measured, and not without good reason. It set a very high bar when we reviewed it more than a year-and-a-half ago and it still holds up against newer products. Samsung has also come out with a newer drive series, the SSD 750 EVO, that sits one step below the 850 EVO in the company's line-up and is meant to be more affordable while still offering competitive performance. And by and large, it holds up in our tests as you'll see a little later. Samsung SSD 750 EVO Specifications & Features Model Code...Read more...

Although NVMe PCI Express solid state drives are all the rage as of late, due to their relatively strong performance and inherent feature benefits, manufacturers continue to tune and refine their SATA based offerings as well. Case in point: the brand new OCZ VX500 series solid state drives we’ll be showing you here today. The OCZ VX500 series targets the mainstream computing segment and initially consists of a quartet of 2.5mm SATA SSDs, packing all, in-house, Toshiba made technology. The hook is, even though these new drives are priced aggressively, they eschew less expensive TLC NAND in favor...Read more...

A couple of weeks back, Intel announced a slew of new solid state drives, targeting a wide array of market segments, that leverage 3D TLC NAND. One of those offerings was a new series of M.2 NVMe drives, dubbed the SSD 600P. According to Intel, the SSD 600P series is “designed to deliver PCIe performance at near-SATA prices”. To date, most NVMe PCIe solid state drives are roughly 1.5 – 3x the cost per gigabyte of SATA based drives, due to the inherent performance benefits and likely the added cost of NVMe controllers. But, as the company has done a number of times in the past dating all the way...Read more...

Thumb drive makers have managed to cram quite a bit into the pinky-sized drives, but there are limits to capacity and to some degree performance, since there is only so much room to work with. Fortunately, there is a nice middle ground between thumb drives and larger external SSDs that conform to the popular 2.5" form factor. EMTEC, for example, has a new line of external SSDs that use a 1.8" form factor, which offer respectable read speeds, although they won't win any performance contests versus more expensive drives. The EMTEC Speedin' X600 is a USB 3.0-compatible drive available in...Read more...

Intel has been relatively quiet on the solid state drive (SSD) front lately, though the company has likely been devoting a lot time and resources to its upcoming 3D XPoint storage architecture. However today, the company has unleashed a flood of new SSD products that cover a broad spectrum of usage scenarios. All of the new SSD products make use of 3D NAND, while the cheapest of them can be had for less than $100. First up is the SSD 600p Series, which is offered in four capacities ranging from 128GB on up to 1TB, and is targeted at consumer desktops and notebooks. The SSDs are available in the...Read more...